Forsyth County leads U.S. with drone delivery as AED takes f…

FORSYTH COUNTY, N.C. — It’s a first-of-its-kind program that is taking flight in the U.S.

The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office held a demonstration event today of their new AED drone.  

It delivers life-saving devices before first responders can get to emergency situations.

Stephen Powell is the Medical Director for Forsyth County Emergency Services. He said for Fire or EMS, nationally, the median time for response is eight minutes till arrival from that emergency call. 

“In some of the rural parts of Forsyth County, the response time for even fire might be very long,” said Powell. “It might be something closer to 12 to 14 minutes and that’s just because of some of the geographic limitations of living in a rural part of the county and that’s specifically where we can deliver a drone quickly to their home where most cardiac arrests occur and that’s where this can be really beneficial to our county.”

Powell said Forsyth County has roughly 350 to 400 cardiac arrests per year that are non-traumatic. 

“Those are the ones that we really think we can help and we know that every single minute that goes by without using an AED increases, my chance of death by 10 percent,” said Powell. “You can imagine how we have three to five minutes that we potentially can gain from a drone delivering an AED. We can actually save lives and I think that’s where this is really important.”

He estimates that a drone can arrive on the scene in three to five minutes. 

Wednesday, during a simulation held by the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, crews put the drone to the test. 

It launched from one location, flew to the simulated emergency, and used a cast to drop down the AED to the caller. 

On the phone, 911 communicators told the bystander how to give CPR, how to use the AED, and what to do while she waited for responders. 

The Forsyth County Sheriff, Bobby Kimbrough Jr. said it’s never been done in the U.S.

“We delivered the first in the nation and it is showing the capability of delivering the AED defibrillator via drone,” said Kimbrough Jr. “Just imagine, we did it with an AED, we can deliver Narcan, there are so many things that we can deliver with this. we can deliver medicine and imagine having them at locations throughout your county. Someone calls in a 911 emergency the same way we launched a drone for first responders. We can launch an AED remotely, all from sitting downtown in the command staff room the communications room, or even the real-time intelligence.”

Kimbrough Jr. said the inspiration came from Duke University and the American Heart Association. 

“We are actually going to Switzerland in August to look at what they’re doing to refine it and duplicate it here and so the only place in the in the world that does it is Switzerland in Denmark,” Kimbrough Jr. said. “We are going to upgrade it and do some things and put them strategically in remote areas of the county.”

It’s taking a large partnership to make this happen. 

Duke University received more than 4 million dollars from the American Heart Association.

Dr. Monique Starks is an associate professor at Duke University School of Medicine. She said it’s turning her six years of research into a reality.  

“I had chills just seeing this in action, even though it’s a simulation,” said Starks. “Seeing it in action for the first time and knowing that over the next few months that this is going to become an integrated part of emergency medical care, it feels unreal.”

For Dr. Starks, this is personal. 

“When I was eight years old, my father had a heart attack,” Dr. Starks said. “His brother died of cardiac arrest, which is an electrical condition where you really only have 10 minutes to provide treatment and he got no CPR, he didn’t get defibrillated, and he died within 15 minutes. This is very near and dear to my heart. I’ve dedicated my career to working to improve outcomes of cardiac arrest in the community and as you heard on the podium, survival statistics have not largely changed over the past 30 years. This technology has the real potential to get treatment to the bystander who is so critical to treating cardiac arrest in the first few minutes.”

A bystander will need to use the AED. 

“The bystander is critical for treating cardiac arrest from calling 911 to initiating CPR and now to using an AED,” said Dr. Starks. “I would encourage everyone to get trained in CPR and to learn how to use an AED because you never know when you will be called on to use it.”

The county plans to help teach people how to give CPR and administer an AED. They also are going on a library tour where they will hold meetings and talk about the program. 

“We also have commercials coming out,” said Kimbrough Jr. “We have ads coming out. We have a plethora of platforms that we’re using to get the message out. In addition to that, once you open up the box, it speaks to you and your language and walks you through it. So it’s actually fail-proof if you ask me and that’s the plan we’re using to roll it out on the social media platforms, television, radio, you name it.”

The program is expected to be launched by the fall. 

“I do think that there’s value in being first, but I think that we have set our aims a little bit higher because we want to be the best,” said Powell. “I think that that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to not only deliver an AED to the scene of a person in cardiac arrest with a drone, but we’re trying to create a comprehensive program, a program that will sustain and go on and help persons, not only with cardiac arrest care but maybe in future conditions and so that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to be the best.”